Ghost Masquerade
by Silver Spider
Summary: How do the actions of a god appear to the child he had been? A fic that ties together Short Hair, To Sleep, Perchance to Dream, Dark Side of the Moon, and Twilight Rising. 5th in a series.


_**Author's Note: **_I know I was planning to do another one from Guts and Casca's pov, but this one wouldn't leave me alone. I just find the boy (who seriously needs a name) a really fascinating character, if only because he shares so much with Griffith. Next fic, called "Home Fires", is definitely going back to Guts' group. Enjoy and please review.

**Ghost Masquerade**

**By: Silver Spider**

When he had been human, Griffith had a habit of touching his Behelit necklace whenever he was deep in thought as the action reassured him. He had tried to recreated the object in his memory palace many times, but it never brought him the same comfort as it once had so he abandoned the project all together. Why should he need an object to bring him comfort in the first place? He was a god. There was nothing he feared.

Nothing, that is, except the boy wandering through a room which took the shape and feel of a typical encampment that the Hawks used to erect as they prepared for battle. It was empty of people, but all the equipment remained, as if their owners would return at any moment. Griffith followed the child for a while, until he stopped by a tent with and two swords, one elegant and slim, the other unnaturally massive, that lay side by side on the sheet in front of it.

The boy kneeled between them, touching each piece of metal in turn making them part of his own memory instead of simply borrowing them from Griffith's. The god wondered if he should share his annoyance at the boy's presence in his part of the memory palace, but it was ultimately pointless. What he _could_ do was take one of the blades and run the child through in a heartbeat. One instant, and he'd be free of him forever. The irony of using one of _those_ two weapons was not lost on him.

"Don't bother," the boy's dreamy voice replied. "These belonged to my mother and father. Even if they are part of _your_ memory, they would never hurt me."

To his dismay, Griffith knew it to be true, if only because the boy had said it was. That was the strange way this place worked. He may have had full control in the physical world, but in the memory palace, he was forced to share power. The revelation had been new to him as the child never imposed his will until very recently. Force, it seemed, would not work, but there were other ways to deal with an enemy.

"Would you like to play a game?"

The question was posed innocently enough. He may not have been susceptible to Griffith's supernatural charisma, but a child was a child. Any mention of play was sure to get his attention, and the god appeared to have succeeded. The boy froze and turned his head ever so slightly so that Griffith could see his long lashes in profile. Time to sweeten the bait.

From Griffith's perspective, the space around them suddenly doubled in size, and the being that shared his mind suddenly grew an extra two feet. He saw the boy's dark eyes widen as they came nearly a hight with one another, though Griffith remained an inch or two taller. Neither the world nor the black-haired child had grown; rather the god had willed his mental projection to revert to a younger age, no more than eight or nine.

"Come play with me," Griffith heard his own light and care-free young voice.

Eying him the new body he was seeing, the boy slowly and cautiously rose to his feet, but he refused to turn his back on the artifacts that belonged to his parents. Young Griffith only smiled.

"It's alright. I promise they'll still be here when you get back. It's just a game."

"What do you want to play?" the question was tentative.

Instantly the Hawks' camp slight vanished, and the two boys were standing in an alleyway of a deserted city, the last rays of the setting sun casting long shadows down the cobbled streets. It was no place in particular. Pieces of clearly came from Griffith's memories of Midland while others were streets he'd grown up on. There were places that he could not rightly place, and Griffith figured he must have taken them from places he had briefly visited with the Hawks or simply imagined. Certainly the castle at the top of the hill was too beautiful, too white, too perfect to ever be real.

Yet.

"I'll race you to there," young Griffith pointed at the magnificent structure on the hill's crest and took off in a run before his companion could give a reply. The instinct of childhood took over, and the other boy raced after the pale-haired one.

The allies were winding and uneven. During several instances the younger child found himself thoroughly lost, only to have Griffith reappear a second later and wave him over in the right direction. Time was always a little off in this place, but it felt as if they had been running for hours. When Griffith appeared around the corner this time, he waited for the boy to catch up to him.

"Are you hungry?"

The boy did not understand until a stall with steam coming out from behind the curtain became visible to his left. A wooden bowl full of hot soup with a spoon floating in it and a meat pastry wrapped in paper appeared out of nowhere on the ledge. Griffith took both and carefully handed the soup to the other child who took it with both hands. They sat down on the steps, each silently eating their supper.

"What's at the castle?" the boy asked when his bowl was only half-full. The white towers looked just a little darker with the setting sun, and despite the distance they must have covered, the castle seemed no closer than it had been when the boys started out.

"That's where I'm going to live," Griffith declared, taking a big bite out of his pastry. "Because kings live in castles, and I'm going to be a king. What to you want to be when you grow up?"

The boy blinked a few times as if surprised by the question.

"A man," he finally answered.

Griffith laughed.

"You're funny. I mean what do you _really_ want to be. When I'm king, I can help you make it happen."

The boy absently stirred the remaining contents of his bowl with the spoon. "I don't think kings can help with these things."

The god disguised in his own younger form looked at him intently for a long moment, as if trying to extract what the child truly meant but the comment. He was about to speak again, but the boy beat him to it.

"What are your mother and father like?"

Griffith opened his mouth to answer and suddenly realized he could not. He searched his memory and could not recall any traces of guardians or parental figures. He was sure they had been there at one point, but nothing remained now. The god that he was know not to care, but the boy that he had been was oddly bothered.

"I don't remember," he answered truthfully.

"I remember mine," his companion whispered, looking into the bowl in his hands. "My mother is the most beautiful woman ever. She's very brave and strong, because most girls can't fight, but she can. At least she could until she got sick."

"I'm sorry."

The god frowned, feeling slightly detached from his childhood-self as the pale boy said the words, because the child sounded really and truly sorry that his friend's mother was ill. Illogical idiocy, but there it was.

"My father is trying to take good care of her," the boy continued, "but it's hard. He was badly hurt himself in that thing that made my mother sick. But it's all okay, because she's better now," the child's face lit up, "and my father is happy about it, so I am, too."

"That's good!"

The god's initial mixture of mild confusion turned to full annoyance. Even the childhood projection of him, a mere tool and thus puppet, refused to cooperate with him. He watched as the boy's face grew more thoughtful. Young Griffith kicked a loose stone onto the street, an obvious act of stalling before a question he wanted to ask but was unsure he should.

"What happened to them?"

"One of their friends did a bad thing. He was the one who hurt them."

"Why?"

The question was so earnest that for a second the god wondered if he was that good of an actor or if his younger self was just ignorant. He'd meant to create the image to make the other boy more at ease with him, but the projected memory of his youth seemed to have taken on a life of it's own. The boy looked up from his soup, big black eyes meeting young Griffith's innocent blue ones. There was not a hint of direct accusation, though something unreadable did flash across the other child's face.

Suddenly the streets around them were no longer empty but teeming with living corpses. Only they were not the faceless skeletons in armor waving the tattered flag of the Band of the Hawk that Griffith had been shown in a vision prior to his accession. These had faces. Judeau, Pippin, Corkus, and all the other men who lost their lives at the Great Eclipse. Their faces contorted in horror and pain, half-skeletal hands reaching for him, voices pleading and echoing the single word:

"_Why_?"

The boy that Griffith had been sprang to his feet, dropping his food, and backed up against the wall of the hut as far as he could. Real shock and fear filled his young features as he stared down at the faces of the men. His eyes darted to his companion, but theother child simply stood unmoving. The masses of the dead did not touch him. He spoke the answer though his lips remained unmoving.

"So he could reach the castle."

The world changed again. One instance it was an unremarkable field of battle, the Hawks victorious once more. The next it was a scene from the Eclipse, horrifying in the absolution of its' slaughter. Lastly it was the Tower of Conviction, where the memory vision split in two. Some memories and images were twisted and deformed, like the body of the child they belonged to had been at the time. Even once they were brought into focus, the deaths were no less total, simply clearer and more vivid.

More nightmarish visions followed.

Young Griffith screamed.

"Enough!"

Just as soon as it appeared, the flow of images was gone as was the boy Griffith had once been. Only the god and the dark-haired child remained, both once again standing in the Hawk's camp. Guts and Casca's swords still lay where they had been less than a foot away. The boy looked up with satisfaction, even as the god's cold gaze bore down at him.

"You asked."

Griffith scowled, then bent on his haunches so that he and the child were at eye level.

"I did," he admitted, "and now I have a different offer for you. The next time you wish to see your parents, I will not stop you. Tell them to stay away from Midland, stay away from me, and I will have no quarrel with them. But should they directly oppose me..."

"I understand."

"Good."

With the silvery cloke billowing behind him, the god whirled on the heel of his boot and left the child behind him. The boy stood perfectly still for a few moments, then turned back to the weapons that had belonged to his parents and placed both palms against the cool steel. Somehow crying felt like the right thing to do, so he let the tears fall.

_**Author's End Note:**_ Kids are hard to write Especially kids who have the knowledge of a god. Just to clarify, the reason why the Moon Child - Guts and Casca's son - knows so much about them prior to his own 'birth' is because he shares Griffith's memories. Not all of them, but in this set up, he can sort of peek into the various rooms of the memory palace while Griffith isn't looking.


End file.
